Houseplants

In his fourth week in Los Angeles, Michael Anthony Farley discovers that there’s not enough to do on weekdays and way too much to do on weekends. Here’s how he spent the weekend. Everyone loves Ray and Charles Eames, and erotic art.

This week starts off and ends a little slowly, but Wednesday to Friday ought to be pretty great. Spend your hump-day checking out openings at Marianne Boesky Gallery and David Lewis, where a group show and a solo show by painter Megan Marrin, respectively, look to have a much-needed sense of humor. Thursday night Condo New York kicks-off, […]

In Michael Jones McKean’s The Ground, presented by The Contemporary, the artist has inserted a dystopian anthropology museum in a long-vacant department store. It’s smart, funny, and just a little terrifying.

Whitney Kimball once remarked rather astutely that “plants are no longer a trend; they are a medium”.

It’s certainly the most beneficial zeitgeist we’ve observed in a while—the indoor air quality at art fairs has never been better! These GIFs from Sasha Katz don’t serve that utility, but might point to another environmental concern. There’s just so much damned e-waste everywhere! For all the greenwashing of Apple’s brand-spanking-NuvaRing campus (surrounded by parking in the midst of suburban sprawl), they sure seem to like designing consumer products with toxic components that outlast their usable lives by several millennia.

Isn’t it nice to picture your iPad, fallen victim to Apple’s notorious built-in-obsolescence, having a second life as a succulent planter? Until we get some real corporate responsibility, it might be the best we can do.

North Korean defector Sun Mu has been stirring up controversy with his parody Socialist Realism paintings. Apparently some South Korean audiences don’t see the irony in his work… which is hard to believe. [The Guardian]

Famously a fan of midcentury modernism, the musician Moby really hates this hotel room designed by the late Zaha Hadid. [Dezeen]

Ulay sued his ex Marina Abramović for royalties over their collaborations, and has been awarded €250,000 by a Dutch court. Cue Simpsons-style “HA HA.” [artnet News]

There’s a huge resurgence of interest in 20th century art dealers who defined movements’ aesthetics. Is this because we’re nostalgic for charisma in the age of global mega galleries and a sometimes faceless business? There are books, exhibitions, and more in the pipeline celebrating legendary gallerists Virginia Dwan, Richard Bellamy, Leo Castelli, and others. [ARTnews]

Former students of NYU’s defunct Tisch Asia art school in Singapore are suing the university, alleging a sub-par education and lack of networking opportunities that left graduates saddled with debt. [New York Daily News]

The listicle “10 Things You May Not Know about Tracey Emin” isn’t all that revelatory, with a few exceptions. Kate Moss once bought one of Emin’s works and it ended up in a London dumpster, found by a lucky passerby. Also, she has a twin and “very bad herpes.” [Sleek]

Here at AFC we’re equally baffled and delighted by the current obsession/trend of houseplants everywhere, particularly in the art world. Kate Losse theorizes our society’s sudden, collective love of all things potted might be rooted in environmental anxieties and the popularity of plant-centric midcentury modernism. [Curbed]

I love how VICE can cover anything from a protest camp in the Amazon to a heroin den in the Midwest and make it seem like the coolest place to be. Mostly for that reason, here’s their coverage of PS1’s NY Art Book Fair. [VICE]

Yesterday, almost immediately after we published a piece in which Whitney Kimball states “I think it’s safe to say by now that plants are no longer a trend; they are a medium (except for potted palms)” the Mexico City art center/residency Casa Maauad posted the above image on Facebook. It’s titled “They are these or they may be others/ ‪#‎PLANTS‬ (2015) Meme digital” from Cristina Garrido, whose exhibition “Un acuerdo tácito” opens there later this month. The plant invasion is real. Even potted palms. [Facebook]

Continuing their “Making it in New York” series, WNYC asks “Are Artists Abandoning NYC?” The answer: yes. And also, no. Plenty of artists are decamping for cheaper places, but the city’s artist population just keeps growing as new waves of debt-saddled art school grads arrive to pay more and more, replacing the disenfranchised who leave. What a depressing cycle. [WNYC]

Yesterday, revelations leaked from an investigation into Michael Jackson’s child molestation charges included the discovery of animal sacrifice photos, weird porn, and drugs started trending across social media. And also art books. Apparently the police were concerned that MJ was using images from artists including Jake and Dino Chapman, Raymond Pettibon, Mike Kelley, Elizabeth Peyton, Takashi Murakami, Larry Clark, Rineke Dijkstra, Paul McCarthy, Richard Prince, Gilbert & George, and others to “groom” young boys by exposing them to explicit material. [Hyperallergic]

Tomorrow, Terence Koh will be broadcasting the names of Orlando shooting victims into space, as part of a performance at Andrew Edlin Gallery. What if this is the first evidence of life on Earth an alien civilization receives? [Observer]

Okay, this blog post is from 3 years ago, but I’m reposting it because I just saw it and I wish it had been required reading in art school. It’s a pronunciation guide to artists’ names. For example: “Ugo Rondinone – OO-go Ron-di-NO-nay”. God, this is so useful I’m surprised there’s not an app for that. [Artspace]

The man who made Ashlee and Jessica Simpson has a new creative endeavor: photography. Meet Joe Simpson, the pop stars’ father who picked up his old hobby after his divorce and now has a terrible-looking show in a Los Angeles gallery. Dear LA: things like this are the reason it’s taken so long for the East Coast to take you seriously. [Format]

Washington art incubator CulturalDC sold its downtown office space, including the home of Flashpoint art gallery. That means there will no longer be a single gallery left in “Gallery Place”. Oops. [Washington City Paper]

I’ve mentioned before that I really love the new Tate Modern addition by Herzog & De Meuron. Now, you can watch a time-lapse video of its construction, which is insanely hypnotic. [Dezeen]

Le Consortium, a nonprofit art space I’d never heard of in Dijon, France is apparently the secret carreer-making venue for tons of famous artists. [The New York Times]

HaeAhn Kwon, the lone holdout student still enrolled in the trainwreck MFA program at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design, has withdrawn. That means the school successfully alienated and lost an entire year of students. [Los Angeles Times]

Michael: I like this collection of small shows because it’s like a survey of what’s hot on the NADA circuit without being as polished or obnoxiously-soul-less as an art fair. (How sad is it that art fairs now feel like the default art-viewing point of reference?) Houseplants! Oversized clothes! Cartoonish vaginas! These are all trends we’ve talked about before, and they’re all trends I’m 100% on board with.Whitney: I think it’s safe to say by now that plants are no longer a trend; they are a medium (except for potted palms).